


A Shiftless Story

by deskclutter



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: Community: 31_days, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-25
Updated: 2010-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:36:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The course of a story changes, and the roles of characters with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shiftless Story

**Title:** A Shiftless Story  
**Day/Theme:** Feb. 14 / Our swords shall play the orators for us  
**Series:** Princess Tutu  
**Character/Pairing:** Fakir/Ahiru, Charon, Mytho, Rue  
**Rating:** PG

  
Once upon a time, there lived a knight.

Now the knight was noble and strong, but though he knew the art of the sword as well as he knew the art of walking or reading, he owned no steel of his own. For a time, the knight did not worry on this, for the duties of a knight do not hold sway only over the fencing arts. But times change and so go circumstances with it, and the knight soon found himself in need of his sword.

It was a strange town in which the knight lived -- so strange that things ought to be counted strange no longer were. An anteater danced ballet; a cat taught at the school; a raven raised a human child. The knight himself had been raised by the village blacksmith, for his parents had both died long ago. It might seem then that the knight's quest for a sword would be easier than the drift of a feather in the wind. But the course of a true quest never runs smooth, as we shall see.

For there was once a story, as the blacksmith knew all too well, of a prince and a raven. The story had stopped long ago, but things had changed, as things do. The prince who had lost his feelings began to regain them. Two princesses appeared -- one to save the prince and the other to stop him, and who can say which princess did which? A story is founded on questions, and in the answering them is moving of the tale. The blacksmith knew one of the answers, and that answer was that the knight would die.

Fearful for his son's life, the blacksmith refused to give the knight a sword, and the knight left in anger and despair.

Suddenly, a girl appeared, for there is always a girl. She was one of the princesses, who knew that the knight without his sword would be as useful to the prince as a limbless tin soldier. With her arts, she persuaded the blacksmith to have some faith in the knight, and that is how the knight earned his sword.

Is this the happy end of the story? No, of course not, for the story had not ended. Here is a question to move the story: Why did the knight need his sword?

Why, indeed.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a knight in possession of a sword and a great deal of pluck must be in want of something to protect. And so he did, for a time.  
But the story changed soon enough, for that is the way of stories. The prince's heart tarnished; he turned to the aid of the raven's daughter.

The knight could no longer count himself a part of the prince's faithful service, for he was sworn to defeat the raven, for it was the ravens who had killed his parents so many years ago. He allied himself to the good princess; but the forces arrayed against them were old and powerful. Many times, both the knight and the princess felt they were of no use at all.

The knight had not been able to protect the prince, and so he did not now say to the princess, "I _will_ protect you."

But the princess did not realise that when the knight said, "I wish I could protect you," what he truly meant was something else altogether.

What happened next? Was it a sad ending? A happy ending?

Who knows, until things change?

A knight must become more than a knight, and a princess more than a princess, if a story is to change yet again. For that is the way of stories, and that is what stories do.


End file.
